Since the outbreak of the war between the US, Israel, and Iran, the West Bank has witnessed a marked escalation in arrest campaigns, night raids, and increasing settler attacks that have assumed a systematic character, making them irreducible to specific or situational security responses. A pattern can be identified in Israeli policies in the West Bank: What the West Bank is experiencing in the context of the war on Iran is not an incidental byproduct of regional escalation, but a deliberate policy that exploits a moment of international instability to reassert control over land and population. This exact pattern of increasing oppression in the West Bank was also marked on the ground during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June 2025, and before that, when global attention was placed on the genocide in Gaza.
With the outbreak of the war with Iran, Israel launched large-scale incursions across cities and towns in the northern, central, and southern West Bank, including Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem, as well as surrounding localities. Israeli forces have raided homes at night, conducted searches and field interrogations, and arrested dozens of Palestinians, including women, children, and former detainees. These arrests have been carried out in the absence of judicial warrants and without affording detainees any procedural safeguards, thereby using them as a policy of collective control. The widespread, arbitrary, and repetitive nature of these operations, combined with the targeting of protected persons under international law, places them within the prohibited framework of collective punishment and turns detention into a tool of governance and population management, in direct violation of the principles of necessity and proportionality and of the right to liberty and personal security.
These measures have also targeted refugee camps, such as Aida Refugee Camp and Jalazone Refugee Camp, where repeated night raids have been conducted, homes and residents photographed, and threatening notices left behind, practices that clearly aim to generate a permanent climate of fear and intimidation. A legal assessment of these measures reveals that they are not grounded in any specific or imminent threat, but rather function as instruments of collective control, in violation of non-derogable rights and in breach of the occupying power’s obligation to ensure, at a minimum, normal civilian life, even in situations of armed conflict.
In parallel, settler attacks against Palestinian communities have intensified, in a spiralling pattern, particularly in areas such as Masafer Yatta, south of Nablus, and the northern Jordan Valley. These attacks have included live fire, physical assaults using batons and chemical agents, destruction of property, seizure of land and grazing areas, and the obstruction of access to livelihoods. In numerous instances, such assaults have taken place in the presence of Israeli forces or under their direct protection, without effective intervention to halt them. In some cases, the violence has been accompanied by the arrest of victims themselves or by preventing ambulances from reaching the injured. Under international law, such violence cannot be treated as isolated acts by individuals; rather, it forms part of a structure of institutionalized complicity, whereby the occupying power bears direct responsibility for both placing the settlers in occupied territory and supporting them politically and financially to deploy violence as a tool of coercion, displacement, and territorial clearing.
Within the same context, and since the onset of the war on Iran, Israel has intensified restrictions on freedom of movement and worship, during the month of Ramadan and Lent, including the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the imposition of severe military checkpoints, and the prohibition of movement between cities and villages, particularly in and around Jerusalem and the central West Bank.
Legal and Analytical Framework
The situation prevailing in the West Bank falls squarely within the legal framework of military occupation as established under international humanitarian law, thereby imposing on Israel, as the occupying power, a set of non-derogable obligations toward the civilian population under its effective control. These obligations include the duty to protect civilians, ensure their safety and well-being, maintain public order, and refrain from any practices that infringe upon their fundamental rights, even in situations of regional escalation or armed conflicts occurring outside the occupied territory.
From this perspective, widespread arrest campaigns, night raids, and restrictions on movement and worship cannot be justified on grounds of military necessity or regional emergency. International law strictly circumscribes the use of exceptional measures through the principles of necessity and proportionality and requires the existence of a concrete and imminent security threat, conditions that are absent from the documented pattern of practices in the West Bank, which are collective and systematic in nature. Transforming detention into a routine mechanism of population management, rather than a narrowly tailored and exceptional measure, constitutes a violation of the right to liberty and personal security and places such practices within the prohibited realm of collective punishment.
International humanitarian law and international human rights law further impose direct responsibility on the occupying power for acts or omissions by non-state actors operating under its authority or effective control, including settlers. In this context, the escalation of settler violence cannot be dissociated from state responsibility, particularly in light of military protection, the absence of accountability, and the use of force against victims rather than perpetrators. This structural complicity transforms settler violence from individual acts into an operational policy of coercion and displacement, giving rise to direct legal responsibility on the part of the occupying state.
Restrictions on freedom of movement and worship, especially the closure of religious sites, the imposition of comprehensive checkpoints, and the obstruction of access to cities, villages, and refugee camps, constitute infringements on fundamental rights that may only be restricted within the narrowest limits. The legal framework governing occupation affirms that safeguarding normal civilian life is not a secondary obligation but lies at the core of the occupying power’s duties. Subjecting these rights to broad and indeterminate military discretion converts emergency measures into a permanent pretext for hollowing out legal protections.
In light of the above, field practices further demonstrate that regional escalation is being exploited to expand the scope of illegal land grab, ethnic cleansing, and impunity in the West Bank, through the reduction of international scrutiny and the reclassification of grave violations as preventive measures or security necessities. Such use of a state of emergency directly contravenes the foundational principles of international humanitarian law, which do not permit the suspension of core obligations toward the civilian population under occupation, even in contexts of armed conflict. Accordingly, the current situation cannot be understood as a temporary response to exceptional circumstances, but rather as the deepening of the occupation’s structural foundations and its reproduction through more coercive and systematized means.